CHARLOTTE — Cities in the South and the Midwest were the big winners in 2022 job growth, while the West Coast is falling behind. That’s one takeaway from a new analysis of payroll data from Gusto Inc., which found metro areas averaged job gains of about 11.9% in 2022 compared to 2021.
Count Charlotte among the big winners. The local metro area posted year-over-year job growth of 16.2%, according to Gusto’s data. That registered as the second-highest growth rate of metros included in the analysis.
“We are seeing this huge spread of economic activity and economic activity since the pandemic. We have typically kind of seen this concentration of economic growth in these large clusters and if we wanted these high-paying jobs and to move up the professional ladder you would move to these large cities and be tied to these cities,” Gusto Economist Luke Pardue said. “But since the pandemic and remote work, those ties have been severed. And you can live and work where you want for the most part. People are moving to these Midwestern cities, to the smaller cities in the East Coast.”
People are choosing factors such as affordability and quality of life over where jobs are traditionally concentrated, a trend that has played out in Census data throughout the pandemic, Pardue said.
Read more here to see how other major metros performed.
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